Page:Angna Enters - Among the Daughters.djvu/111

 and her airs and her girl with bleached hair. At the grocer's, the butcher's, no one talked about anything else but the Welland house. And Vida, that little fool. Mr. and Mrs. Bertrand did not speak the rest of the evening. Aggrieved, she went down into the cellar and sorted out rotting apples and vegetables from the barrels of winter supplies. At last, tired of waiting for him to go to bed, she went up to see what he was doing. He was in the parlor looking out the window. Mrs. Bertrand went up to bed thinking he would wait for Vida.

St. Cecilia's had struck eleven when Vida arrived, her throat sore from the strain of running, her breath coming in gasps. Her father was outside to meet her.

"You little no-good, where've you been? You get in the house and in bed before I beat the living daylights outa you."

She ran past him and up to her room where her mother waited.

Mr. Bertrand smoked a cigarette, walking up and down until the lights went out in Vida's room and his own. There was the sound of an auto and he moved quickly up the dark passage between his and the Welland house. The excitation he expected in seeing a leavetaking of Harry and Lucy deepened as the auto wheezed off without Harry getting out, and Lucy stood alone looking up at her aunt's room.

He whispered her name softly. It must be about Vida, thought Lucy frowning, and went to see what Mr. Bertrand wanted.

"What is it?" she asked, forming Vida's defense.

A ray from the moon caught the cheekbone of his upside down pear head and turned it into a fanged skull as he leered. Cruel machinist's fingers dug to the bone of her arms and the stinking hulk bent over her.

"How about a little kiss."

"Don't you dare, or I'll yell."

The sharp heel of her slipper sought a vulnerable spot but, terrified of being caught, he threw her down.

"You dirty little bitch, you let my girl alone or I'll teach you."

Mr. Bertrand stalked into his house and Lucy got up from the snow as the light went on in Mabel's room.

As Mr. Bertrand slammed and locked the kitchen door he heard a scurrying sound in Vida's room above. Inexorably he stamped to the bedroom and got his razor strop.

Vida, pretending sleep, held the covers tightly to her trembling body, but the light clicked on and lit the bloodshot eyes of her Rh